Dad saw us coming his way. “No, kids!” he shouted. “Get back behind the columns! Alex, go with them!”
That was all Yancy needed to hear. He took off again in the direction of the entrance.
“No, Uncle Steve!” Alex protested, only to be hit by a blast a moment later.
“Your arrows don’t work well enough!” Dad shouted. “Go!”
Alex began scrambling our way, still shooting her arrows. When she reached Maison, Destiny, and me, we started heading back together. Yancy had already hidden himself on the other side of a column, barely dodging a yellow blast that hit the column instead of him.
As I swam, I looked back at Dad. He was battling the guardians and making them disappear so they couldn’t just follow us into the monument. It needed to be done, but how many guardians might be inside the monument already?
“Hurry, Dad!” I called.
I shouldn’t have said anything. Dad looked back at the sound of my voice and that distracted him long enough for another fish to get him. Dad stiffened and then his whole body sagged. He wasn’t moving.
“No!” My voice was a wail now. Despite everything Dad had said, I started swimming back to him. Maybe I could grab him and pull him behind the column. We’d get some milk in him and then he’d be okay. As it was, I knew he was taking on all these blasts so he could better protect us!
“Stevie, wait!” Maison called.
The others all began shouting behind me. Their words were gargled, and their voices were echoing on top of one another, so I couldn’t make out their words. It wasn’t until the last moment I realized they were trying to warn me about a guardian rushing my way.
I turned my head and saw it. That single eye, enormous and close. Those spikes pointing out like fangs. And its purple light began to spark, readying for an attack.
I tried to dart away and toward it at the same time, my instincts pushing me one way and my mind another. As a result, I stumbled and knocked myself into the fish. My first thought was that if the laser didn’t get me, running into the guardian would stick me full of spikes.
But I didn’t feel any spikes. I didn’t feel any laser, either. No, I felt something much worse. The guardian opened its mouth, and the next thing I knew I was inside it.
CHAPTER 6
I HAD BEEN EATEN ALIVE!
It was like being in a tiny red chamber. I barely fit, and I could see little gray and red blocks along the walls of the guardian’s stomach, or whatever this place was.
Sharks on Earth might not go around eating people, but guardians in the Overworld did! What was I going to do? Could I get out of here? I tried to pull myself out through the guardian’s mouth, but I was stuck. I knew I was just imagining it in my panic, yet I felt like the space was getting smaller and smaller, sucking me in. Let me out of here!
The guardian jolted, and I jolted with it. What had happened? There was another jolt, and then another. In an instant, I was back out in the blue ocean and the guardian was gone.
Alex stood a few feet away, her bow and arrows out. Her arrows still worked well enough underwater for her to finish off that guardian and release me.
“Alex!” I cried. I couldn’t even say, Thank you! Or, You saved me! I was too shaken and relieved to even think straight.
“Just in a day’s work,” Alex said proudly.
Wait, what about Dad? I turned and saw Dad was still sagging helplessly in the water with his head down. Maison and Destiny had each grabbed one of his arms and were pulling him forward. They must have taken out the other guardians in the area, because I didn’t see any.
“Stevie, you’re all right,” Dad breathed. His pain made him sound weak. “I couldn’t get to you in time.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” I said, swimming slowly over to him. “I’m okay.” Right then I was more worried about him than me. Being sucked into the guardian had scared me, but I hadn’t gotten hurt from it.
“Where’s Yancy?” Destiny asked, looking around for him.
Yancy sheepishly peeked out from behind a column. “I’m here,” he called in a low voice.
I was pretty sure I knew what had happened during the time I’d been swallowed: Alex had saved me, Maison and Destiny had gone to Dad’s aid and taken out the other guardians, and Yancy had stayed hidden behind a column. That darn Yancy.
“Do you see any more guardians?” Maison asked.
“Not here,” Alex said, looking around. “Let’s get inside and have some milk before new ones find us.”
Because more would find us, and we all knew it.
CHAPTER 7
SLOWLY, CAREFULLY, WE SWAM INTO THE ENORMOUS opening of the ocean monument. Maison and Destiny were still holding Dad, keeping him braced. We all looked up and around, amazed by the tall ceilings that towered over us.
“All ocean monuments have different sets of rooms, though they always have two wings,” Dad was saying in his frail voice. Hurt or not, he wanted to keep us on top of things. “There’s a room to the right. Go.”
We swam into it. The room was small and empty, lined everywhere with turquoise stones. As soon as we were in there, Dad reached into his toolkit and pulled out a yellow, square-shaped sponge.
And what a difference that made! The sponge immediately began sucking up the water all around us. Outside this room everything was still blue ocean, and water lapped around our heels. But from our ankles up, the room was full of sweet, fresh air. Although the Potion of Water Breathing let us breathe under the water, it felt more natural to be in a space with actual air. I sucked the air deep into my lungs, savoring it.
“That’s amazing,” Yancy said. “Water doesn’t work like that on Earth, so this is breaking all the rules of science. And, hey, Stevie, what was it like being inside the guardian? When you play Minecraft, you can accidentally slip inside them. I know, since—”
Yancy stopped talking. That’s because Dad was giving him a not-another-word-out-of-you look.
“Yes, game knowledge from the one who hid,” Dad said sarcastically. And Dad wasn’t usually a sarcastic guy.
“You told us to get behind the columns,” Yancy stammered. “I was just following orders.”
“If one of your friends is hurt, you help them,” Dad said. “I didn’t see you try to help Stevie when the guardian swallowed him. I didn’t see you try to help anyone . . . except yourself.”
Yancy took a long swallow.
Dad sighed and reached into his toolkit. “Everyone, have a glass of milk. We all need it.”
He handed us each a tall glass of milk, and I couldn’t think of a time when milk had looked more delicious. I drank it down with deep gulps and felt all my pains and aches magically go away. When I’d finished the milk, I felt like a new person.
“I wish milk worked like this on Earth,” Destiny mused. “It’s all we’d ever need to get better!”
“Milk’s great,” Alex agreed. “Wow, I can’t believe the fish can blast us this much, even with our armor on.” We all nodded in grim agreement to that.
I looked at Dad, glad to see he had regained his strength and looked like himself again.
Alex was already smashing through blocks in the room. “I’m seeing if the crystal shard is here,” she explained.
“I doubt it’s close to the entrance, but it doesn’t hurt,” Dad said. “It also gives us a moment to catch our breath.”
Alex approached a sea lantern on the wall and smashed it. There wasn’t anything in it or under it. “Hmm,” she said.
Meanwhile, Maison stepped up next to me. “What was it like, being inside the guardian?” she whispered in my ear. “My heart about stopped beating!”
“It was like being in a small, red room,” I said. “It didn’t hurt, but . . .” I shuddered. “I don’t want to ever do it again.”
Maison nodded sympathetically.
“All right, kids,” Dad said, when he saw Alex had thoroughly searched the room. “It’s time to get back out there.”
From above, something in the oc
ean monument let out a roar.
CHAPTER 8
“WHAT WAS THAT?” I GASPED.
I heard another echoing roar, nearly as loud as the first one. It seemed to shake the walls and columns.
“It’s probably the sound of the elder guardians,” Dad said. “Remember, we’re avoiding those.”
I bit my lip. If they roared like that, I definitely didn’t want to end up face-to-face with one!
We stepped out of our room and back into the watery hall, with Dad leading and Alex right behind him. I noticed Yancy stepped out last of all and had his head down as if he didn’t want to look at anyone. Fine with me. After how he’d been acting today, I didn’t mind not interacting with him!
“‘Find the glow,’” Alex murmured to herself, mulling over Steve Alexander’s words. “There’s another sea lantern!” She hurried over to check it out. Soon her expression clouded because it was nothing.
“You kids all look for the crystal shard,” Dad said. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any guardians.”
“There’s one now!” Maison said.
A guardian had turned a corner and was coming at us. Yancy cringed and ducked behind a column as Dad swam over and battled the fish. I kept my eyes on Dad, making sure he was okay, despite the fact I knew I should have been concentrating on looking for the crystal shard. It was still only one guardian, and it didn’t take Dad long to take care of it. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, making extra bubbles run out of my mouth and float toward the surface.
Then I put my head down and started searching. All I saw were lots and lots of prismarine blocks and a few sea lanterns. Alex went right to the sea lanterns, getting excited whenever she spotted a new one. Then she would look disappointed as each sea lantern turned up nothing. Meanwhile, Dad kept any stray guardians at bay.
“Pssst, Stevie,” came a small, gargled voice.
It was Yancy, still behind a column. I ignored him.
“Pssssst, Stevie!” It was a little louder this time.
“What, Yancy?” I asked, frustrated.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Then talk,” I said. I had a feeling he wanted me to go over to him to hear whatever he had to say, like he was some baby who needed comforting. He was the oldest of all of us, not counting Dad. I couldn’t believe what a chicken Yancy was being today.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t all that surprising. Before Yancy was my friend, he was a cyberbully known by the name TheVampireDragon555. Back then he used to terrorize people online, all from behind the safety of his computer screen. Whether behind a screen or a column, Yancy could talk big and scary while keeping himself protected.
I knew that wasn’t totally fair. After Yancy put his cyberbullying days behind him, he had risked his life for the Overworld and shown real bravery more than once. So what was his problem now?
“Can’t you come here?” Yancy whispered.
“No, I’m looking for the crystal shard,” I said. I swam farther away from Yancy, partly to cover more space, partly to get away from him. I thought I heard Yancy sigh, but it was cut off by another monument-shaking roar.
“Hey, I found something neat!” Maison called.
Glad for the distraction, I quickly made my way to Maison. She’d grabbed two columns and pulled herself into a little space to the side. As we all crowded around, we found a room chock-full of boxed gold that hung from the ceiling.
No, wait, it wasn’t gold we were seeing. It was sponges. I had known that you could find them in ocean monuments. What I hadn’t realized was that you could find so many. If Dad and I harvested these, we could fill up our whole supply shed!
“Should we take these with us?” Maison asked. “Would they be helpful?”
Dad shook his head. “They’re already full of water, so they can’t pull the water out of a room like we did earlier. You need a dry sponge for that. Just look through them to see if the shard is in here.”
Maison and I swam through the sponges, poking around for anything glowing. Nothing. However, it did give Maison and me some time together.
“Do you know what’s wrong with Yancy?” I asked.
“Lots of things are wrong with Yancy,” she said jokingly.
“He’s acting extra weird,” I said, shaking my head. “I think he’s slowing us down on this mission. He’s barely moving.”
“Just ignore him unless he’s in trouble,” Maison said. “We need to put our energies toward finding the shard.”
She sounded so logical, and yet I still couldn’t drop my feelings. We searched through all the sponges on the ceiling. But just as I turned, I found myself face-to-face with the eye of another guardian.
CHAPTER 9
THE GUARDIAN WAS SO CLOSE ITS EYE TOOK UP ALMOST all of my vision. I immediately struck out at it with my sword, then yelped. The guardian’s spikes were all out, and now I realized how much it hurt to hit them. It was like a special laser that just went through my sword arm. I had to quickly hit the guardian two more times, and both times I felt the sting. Then the guardian was gone.
It was my own fault. I was thinking too much about Yancy and the shard and not spending enough time watching where I was going and what was around me. Maison peeked out from behind a large sponge, her black hair floating all around her face.
“Are you okay, Stevie?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, massaging my arm. “There’s nothing in this room. Let’s get back to the others.”
I was still rubbing my arm when we joined up with them. Dad saw what I was doing and said, “Make sure you hit them when their spikes are down.”
“Yeah . . .” I said, embarrassed. “I figured that one out.”
“Ooh!” Alex cried out excitedly from ahead. “I found it!”
We all rushed to her, thinking she’d found the crystal shard. Even Yancy got out from behind his column and hurried over. But when we caught up to Alex, all I saw was an enormous, column-like structure in the middle of the monument, made out of dark prismarine. Alex started pounding it, knocking the dark prismarine away. Underneath she found blocks of real gold, not sponges.
“We can take some of this gold back, right, Uncle Steve?” Alex said, ready to start putting some in her toolkit.
“No,” Dad said. “We only want the crystal.”
I still saw Alex sneak a block of gold into her toolkit before she swam on. I decided there wasn’t any point in telling on her.
“So we found sponges, and we found gold,” I said. “But we’re still not any closer to the crystal shard.”
Another roar shook the monument and we all drew closer together.
Dad frowned. “If we go too far down either of these wings, we might run into the elder guardians. Let’s keep going forward.”
As we swam, I noticed the part of the ocean monument we were in was getting darker. I thought about Earth’s deep ocean, where it was so pitch-black the fish needed to glow just to be able to see. Was the ocean monument going to keep getting darker and darker?
I opened my mouth to say something and I found it was hard to speak. My hand rushed to my throat. It wasn’t actually getting darker! Our potions were running out!
Everyone else seemed to be noticing this at the same time as me. Dad said something to us, and I could only make out some of the words. It sounded like, “Get—potion—drink—”
We all knew what he meant. Everyone’s hands dove into their toolkits (or, for Yancy, his backpack) and yanked out their potions.
As soon as I got down the Potion of Night Vision, everything got less dark and cloudy. I realized it was starting to get a little uncomfortable to breathe, though it wasn’t too bad yet. And when I chugged down the Potion of Water Breathing, all that discomfort went away. Phew. There was definitely no way we could be down here without those potions.
That got me thinking.
We hadn’t even explored a fraction of the ocean monument, but we’d already used up half our potions. And when the potions we’d just drunk los
t their effect, that would be it. We’d be done.
CHAPTER 10
THE SEA LANTERNS ARE TOO OBVIOUS, I THOUGHT while I saw Alex smashing at them and coming away disappointed. So was the gold. So where would Steve Alexander have wanted to stash away the crystal shard? Was it someplace with meaning, like with the crystal shard in the jungle temple? Or did he just sneak it behind one of these prismarine blocks so that we’d have to tear the whole place apart looking for it?
Minutes were passing, feeling fast and slow at the same time. Slow because we weren’t finding anything useful. Fast because we knew the clock was running out on our air supply.
“There’s another room with sponges,” Dad said. “Stevie, check it out, and don’t hit any guardians with their spikes out.”
“Okay,” I said, swimming that way. I tried not to feel embarrassed that he felt a need to remind me.
“Pssst, hey, hey, Stevie,” whispered a gargled voice.
Darn it. It was Yancy again.
I turned, and at least this time he was floating out in the open instead of hiding.
“Spill the beans, Yancy,” I said. It was an Earth expression I’d learned from him. It didn’t involve any actual beans.
It looked like Yancy really wanted to say something to me and just wasn’t sure how.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been the best today,” Yancy finally said. He followed me into the space with all the sponges. It kind of felt closed off, with just the two of us there, and we were both looking among the sponges for the crystal shard or any clues.
I didn’t say anything. I just kept looking. And I kept my eyes out for guardians.
“The truth is, I’m terrified down here,” Yancy said.
“We all are,” I replied matter-of-factly. Dad told me it was normal to get scared, but it wasn’t normal to run from what you were scared of, unless there were no other options. And we had to find that crystal, so there weren’t other options.
“No, it’s different,” Yancy said. “You see . . . I almost drowned when I was little.”
This caught my attention. I hadn’t known that. Then again, there were lots of things I didn’t know about Yancy.
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